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Apache Bad Bot and User-Agent Blocker, Spam Referrer Blocker, Bad IP Blocker and Wordpress Theme Detector Blocker

The Ultimate Apache (2.2 > 2.4+) Bad Bot, User-Agent, Spam Referrer Blocker, Adware, Malware and Ransomware Blocker, Clickjacking Blocker, Click Re-Directing Blocker, SEO Companies and Bad IP Blocker with Anti DDOS System, Nginx Rate Limiting and Wordpress Theme Detector Blocking. Stop and Block all kinds of bad internet traffic from ever reaching your web sites. PLEASE SEE: Definition of Bad Bots

Version: V3.2024.12.2123

Bad Referrer Count: 7104

Bad Bot Count: 666

Fake Googlebots: 217

Created by: https://github.com/mitchellkrogza
Copyright Mitchell Krog mitchellkrog@gmail.com

Two Versions of the Blocker ? PLEASE TAKE NOTE :exclamation:

:exclamation:There are now two distinctly different versions of this blocker.:exclamation:

<a href="https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/tree/master/Apache_2.2">Apache 2.2 > 2.4+ (access_compat)</a> [ TESTED ON APACHE 2.2 > 2.4.27 ]

A Version for Apache 2.2 > 2.4 + which requires the module access_compat and uses the older 
Order Allow,Deny Access Control Methods. 

This is the ORIGINAL VERSION of the blocker and is now located in the folder Apache_2.2 at:
https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/tree/master/Apache_2.2

<a href="https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/tree/master/Apache_2.4">Apache 2.4+ ONLY</a> [ TESTED ON APACHE 2.4 > 2.4.34 ]

A new version for Apache 2.4+ only which uses new the Access Control Structures of 
<RequireAll> and <RequireAny>. 

Anyone using Apache 2.4 should be using this new version as it fully complies with the new Access 
Control Methods of Apache and does not require the access_compat module to be loaded. 

This new version is at: 
https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/tree/master/Apache_2.4

For Support, Contributions & Idea Sharing

Please make sure you are subscribed to Github Notifications to be notified when the blocker is updated or when any important or mission critical (potentially breaking) changes may take place.

Also follow me on twitter @ubuntu101za

Help Support This Project

CONFIGURATION OF THE APACHE BAD BOT BLOCKER:

CPANEL Users read - https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/blob/master/_CPanel_Instructions/README.md
Users Unable to run the full Bot Blocker read - https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/blob/master/_htaccess_versions/README.md
Includes the creation of a google-exclude.txt file for creating filters / segments in Google Analytics (see instructions lower down)
Includes the creation of a google-disavow.txt file for use in Google Webmaster Tools (see instructions lower down)
Includes .htaccess and robots.txt files for users without root access to their Apache Servers.

COPY THE GLOBALBLACKLIST.CONF FILE FROM THE REPO $APACHE_CONF is generally located at /etc/apache2 or /etc/httpd depending on OS

Copy the contents of globalblacklist.conf into your $APACHE_CONF/custom.d folder. e.g. /etc/apache2/custom.d on Ubuntu/Debian /etc/httpd on RHEL/centos You need to create this folder.

The following directions use /etc/apache2 as an example.

sudo mkdir /etc/apache2/custom.d

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.2/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf

If your Linux distribution does not have wget you can replace the wget commands using curl as follows:

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.2/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf -o /etc/apache2/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf

WHITELIST ALL YOUR OWN DOMAIN NAMES AND IP ADDRESSES

Whitelist all your own domain names and IP addresses. Please note important changes, this is now done using include files so that you do not have to keep reinserting your whitelisted domains and IP addresses every time you update.

:exclamation: :exclamation: :exclamation: WARNING: Please do NOT ever use 127.0.0.1 as a whitelisted IP address in whitelist-ips.conf it will cause the blocker to stop functioning.

copy the whitelist-ips.conf file into that folder

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.2/custom.d/whitelist-ips.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/whitelist-ips.conf

copy the whitelist-domains.conf file into the same folder

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.2/custom.d/whitelist-domains.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/whitelist-domains.conf

Use nano, vim or any other text editor to edit both whitelist-ips.conf and whitelist-domains.conf to include all your own domain names and IP addresses that you want to specifically whitelist from the blocker script.

When pulling any future updates now you can simply pull the latest globalblacklist.conf file and it will automatically include your whitelisted domains and IP addresses. No more remembering having to do this yourself.

DOWNLOAD CUSTOM BLACKLIST INCLUDE FILE FOR IP ADDRESS AND IP RANGE BLOCKING

Blacklist any IP addresses or Ranges you wish to keep out of your servers. Please note important changes, this is now done using include files so that you have full control over what IP addresses and IP Ranges and blocked from your Apache Server.

copy the blacklist-ips.conf file into that folder

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.2/custom.d/blacklist-ips.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/blacklist-ips.conf

Use nano, vim or any other text editor to edit the blacklist-ips.conf file as you like.

When pulling any future updates now your custom IP blacklist will not be overwritten.

DOWNLOAD CUSTOM BAD REFERRER WORDS INCLUDE FILE FOR CUSTOMIZED SCANNING OF BAD WORDS

Scan for any bad referrer words you wish to keep out of your servers. Please note important changes, this is now done using include files so that you have full control over what IP addresses and IP Ranges and blocked from your Apache Server.

copy the bad-referrer-words.conf file into that folder

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.2/custom.d/bad-referrer-words.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/bad-referrer-words.conf

Use nano, vim or any other text editor to edit the bad-referrer-words.conf file as you like.

When pulling any future updates now your custom bad referrer words list will not be overwritten.

DOWNLOAD CUSTOM BLACKLIST USER-AGENTS INCLUDE FILE FOR CUSTOMIZED BLOCKING OF USER AGENTS

Allows you to add your own custom list of user agents with this new include file.

copy the blacklist-user-agents.conf file into that folder

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.2/custom.d/blacklist-user-agents.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/blacklist-user-agents.conf

NOTE: On the Apache Blocker if you want to over-ride any of the whitelisted bots you can add them to this include file and the previously whitelisted bots in the blocker will be over-ridden by this include file. So let's say for some "obscure" reason you really do not want any search engines like Googlebot or Bingbot to ever access or index your site, you add them to your blacklist-user-agents.conf and they will be over-ridden from the earlier whitelisting in the blocker. This now gives users total control over the blocker without every having to try and modify the globalblacklist.conf file. So now you can customize all your include files and you can still pull the daily updates of globalblacklist.conf and it will not touch any of your custom include files.

INCLUDE THE GLOBALBLACKLIST.CONF

Include the globalblacklist.conf file in the beginning of a directory block just after your opening Options statements and before the rest of your host config example below. Remove the "<<<<<< This needs to be added" part

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerName local.dev
	DocumentRoot /var/www/html
	ErrorLog /tmp/error.log

	<Directory "/var/www/html">
	Options +Includes
	Options +FollowSymLinks -Indexes
	Include custom.d/globalblacklist.conf
	</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

You can include globalblacklist.conf globally (for all virtual hosts) if you put the following configuration after virtual host configuration.

# ######################################
# GLOBAL! deny bad bots and IP addresses
# ######################################
#
# should be set after <VirtualHost>s see https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/sections.html#merging
<Location "/">
	# AND-combine with preceding configuration sections  
	AuthMerging And
	# include black list
	Include custom.d/globalblacklist.conf
</Location>

TEST YOUR APACHE CONFIGURATION

Do an Apache2 Config Test

sudo apache2ctl configtest

If you get no errors then you followed my instructions so now you can make the blocker go live with a simple.

sudo service apache2 reload

sudo service httpd reload

The blocker is now active and working so now you can run some simple tests from another linux machine to make sure it's working.

TESTING*

Run the following commands one by one from a terminal on another linux machine against your own domain name. substitute yourdomain.com in the examples below with your REAL domain name

curl -A "googlebot" http://yourdomain.com

Should respond with 200 OK

curl -A "80legs" http://yourdomain.com

curl -A "masscan" http://yourdomain.com

Should respond with 403 Forbidden

curl -I http://yourdomain.com -e http://100dollars-seo.com

curl -I http://yourdomain.com -e http://zx6.ru

Should respond with 403 Forbidden

The Apache Ultimate Bot Blocker is now WORKING and PROTECTING your web sites !!!

UPDATING THE APACHE BAD BOT BLOCKER is now easy thanks to the automatic includes for whitelisting your own domain names.

Updating to the latest version is now as simple as:

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.2/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf

sudo apache2ctl configtest

sudo service apache2 reload

And you will be up to date with all your whitelisted domains included automatically for you now.

AUTO UPDATING WITH CRON:

See the latest auto updater bash script for Apache 2.2 and 2.4 contributed by Luke Taylor @lutaylor at:

https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/blob/master/update-apacheblocker.sh

Relax now and sleep better at night knowing your site is telling all those baddies FORBIDDEN !!!

COPY THE GLOBALBLACKLIST.CONF FILE FROM THE REPO $APACHE_CONF is generally located at /etc/apache2 or /etc/httpd depending on OS

Copy the contents of globalblacklist.conf into your $APACHE_CONF/custom.d folder. e.g. /etc/apache2/custom.d on Ubuntu/Debian /etc/httpd on RHEL/centos You need to create this folder.

The following directions use /etc/apache2 as an example.

sudo mkdir /etc/apache2/custom.d

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.4/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf

If your Linux distribution does not have wget you can replace the wget commands using curl as follows:

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.4/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf -o /etc/apache2/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf

WHITELIST ALL YOUR OWN DOMAIN NAMES AND IP ADDRESSES

:exclamation: :exclamation: :exclamation: WARNING: Please do NOT ever use 127.0.0.1 as a whitelisted IP address in whitelist-ips.conf it will cause the blocker to stop functioning.

copy the whitelist-ips.conf file into that folder

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.4/custom.d/whitelist-ips.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/whitelist-ips.conf

copy the whitelist-domains.conf file into the same folder

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.4/custom.d/whitelist-domains.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/whitelist-domains.conf

DOWNLOAD CUSTOM BLACKLIST INCLUDE FILE FOR IP ADDRESS AND IP RANGE BLOCKING

copy the blacklist-ips.conf file into that folder

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.4/custom.d/blacklist-ips.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/blacklist-ips.conf

Use nano, vim or any other text editor to edit the blacklist-ips.conf file as you like.

When pulling any future updates now your custom IP blacklist will not be overwritten.

DOWNLOAD CUSTOM BAD REFERRER WORDS INCLUDE FILE FOR CUSTOMIZED SCANNING OF BAD WORDS

copy the bad-referrer-words.conf file into that folder

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.4/custom.d/bad-referrer-words.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/bad-referrer-words.conf

Use nano, vim or any other text editor to edit the bad-referrer-words.conf file as you like.

When pulling any future updates now your custom bad referrer words list will not be overwritten.

DOWNLOAD CUSTOM BLACKLIST USER-AGENTS INCLUDE FILE FOR CUSTOMIZED BLOCKING OF USER AGENTS

Allows you to add your own custom list of user agents with this new include file.

copy the blacklist-user-agents.conf file into that folder

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.4/custom.d/blacklist-user-agents.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/blacklist-user-agents.conf

INCLUDE THE GLOBALBLACKLIST.CONF

<VirtualHost *:80>

	ServerName local.dev
    ServerAlias www.local.dev
	DocumentRoot /var/www/html
	ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
	CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

		<Directory "/var/www/html">
    		AllowOverride All
    		Options FollowSymLinks
			Include custom.d/globalblacklist.conf
  		</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

# vim: syntax=apache ts=4 sw=4 sts=4 sr noet

You can include globalblacklist.conf globally (for all virtual hosts) if you put the following configuration after virtual host configuration.

# ######################################
# GLOBAL! deny bad bots and IP addresses
# ######################################
#
# should be set after <VirtualHost>s see https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/sections.html#merging
<Location "/">
	# AND-combine with preceding configuration sections  
	AuthMerging And
	# include black list
	Include custom.d/globalblacklist.conf
</Location>

TEST YOUR APACHE CONFIGURATION

Do an Apache2 Config Test

sudo apache2ctl configtest

If you get no errors then you followed my instructions so now you can make the blocker go live with a simple.

sudo service apache2 reload

sudo service httpd reload

The blocker is now active and working so now you can run some simple tests from another linux machine to make sure it's working.

TESTING*

Run the following commands one by one from a terminal on another linux machine against your own domain name. substitute yourdomain.com in the examples below with your REAL domain name

curl -A "googlebot" http://yourdomain.com

Should respond with 200 OK

curl -A "80legs" http://yourdomain.com

curl -A "masscan" http://yourdomain.com

Should respond with 403 Forbidden

curl -I http://yourdomain.com -e http://100dollars-seo.com

curl -I http://yourdomain.com -e http://zx6.ru

Should respond with 403 Forbidden

The Apache Ultimate Bot Blocker is now WORKING and PROTECTING your web sites !!!

UPDATING THE APACHE BAD BOT BLOCKER is now easy thanks to the automatic includes for whitelisting your own domain names.

Updating to the latest version is now as simple as:

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/master/Apache_2.4/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf -O /etc/apache2/custom.d/globalblacklist.conf

sudo apache2ctl configtest

sudo service apache2 reload

And you will be up to date with all your whitelisted domains included automatically for you now.

AUTO UPDATING WITH CRON:

See the latest auto updater bash script for Apache 2.2 and 2.4 contributed by Luke Taylor @lutaylor at:

https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/blob/master/update-apacheblocker.sh

Relax now and sleep better at night knowing your site is telling all those baddies FORBIDDEN !!!

WHY BLOCK BAD BOTS ?

<h4 id="define-bad-bots"> Definition of Bad Bots </h4>

Bad bots are:

Bad Referrers
Bad User-Agent Strings
Spam Referrers
Spam Bots and Bad Bots
Nuisance or Unwanted Bots
Sites Linked to Lucrative Malware, Adware and Ransomware Clickjacking Campaigns
Vulnerability scanners
Gambling and Porn Web Sites
E-mail harvesters
Content scrapers
Link Ranking Bots
Aggressive bots that scrape content
Image Hotlinking Sites and Image Thieves
Bots or Servers linked to viruses or malware
Government surveillance bots
Botnet Attack Networks (Mirai)
Known Wordpress Theme Detectors (Updated Regularly)
SEO companies that your competitors use to try improve their SEO
Link Research and Backlink Testing Tools
Stopping Google Analytics Ghost Spam
Browser Adware and Malware (Yontoo etc)

To contribute your own bad referers

please add them into the https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/blob/master/Pull%20Requests%20Here%20Please/badreferers.list file and then send a Pull Request (PR). All additions will be checked for accuracy before being merged.

Issues:

Log any issues regarding incorrect listings on the issues system and they will be investigated and removed if necessary.

No root access to your Apache server and Unable to run this blocker?

Version 2.2017.03 introduced .htaccess versions of the spam referrer for those unable to run the full Apache Bad Bot Blocker look inside the https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker/tree/master/_htaccess_versions folder in this repo for instructions.

Help Support This Project

Bots attempt to make themselves look like other software or web sites by disguising their user agent. Their user agent names may look harmless, perfectly legitimate even.

For example, "^Java" but according to Project Honeypot, it's actually one of the most dangerous BUT a lot of legitimate bots out there have "Java" in their user agent string so the approach taken by many to block is not only ignorant but also blocking out very legitimate crawlers including some of Google's and Bing's.

Welcome to the Ultimate Bad Bot and Referer Blocker for Apache Web Server 2.4.x

THE METHOD IN MY MADNESS

This bot blocker list is designed to be an Apache include file and uses the apache BrowserMatchNoCase directive. This way the .conf file can be loaded once into memory by Apache and be available to all web sites that you operate. You simply need to use an Include statement (example below)

I personally find the BrowserMatchNoCase Directive to be more accurate than using SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent because BrowserMatchNoCase is not case sensitive and from my tests is more accurate that SetEnvIfNoCase.

My method also results in a cleaner file to maintain that requires no complex regex other than the Name of the Bot. BrowserMatchNoCase will do the rest. You can use Regex if you like but it's NOT needed and I proved it by testing with the Chrome extension User-Agent Switcher for Chrome.

The user agent "Aboundex" is found without using "^Aboundex" ... much simpler for anyone to maintain than other lists using Regex.
Likewise it is unnecessary to have "Download\ Demon" instead you now just have "Download Demon".
Additionally if we have a rule, like below "Image Stripper" and a bot decides to change its User-Agent string to "NOT Image Stripper I Promise" he is picked up regardless and blocked immediately.

I only capitalise bot names in my list for ease of reading and maintenance, remember its not case-sensitive so will catch any combination like "Bot" "bOt" and "bOT".

So for those of you who SUCK with Regex my Apache Bad Bot Blocker is your saviour !!!

IT'S CENTRALISED:

The beauty of this is that it is one central file used by all your web sites. This means there is only place to make amendments ie. adding new bots that you discover in your log files. Any changes are applied immediately to all sites after a simple "sudo service apache2 reload".

IT IS TINY AND LIGHTWEIGHT

The file is tiny in size. At the time of this writing and the first public commit of this the file size including all the commenting "which Apache ignores" is a mere 212 kb in size. It is so lightweight that Apache does not even know it's there. It already contains thousands of entries.

NO COMPLICATED REWRITE RULES:

This also does not use ReWrite Rules and Conditions which also put overhead onto Apache, this sends a simple 403 Forbidden Response and DONE !!!

APACHE WILL LOVE YOU FOR IT !!!!

This approach also makes this very lightweight on Apache versus the usual .htaccess approach that many choose. The .htaccess approach is a little clumsy because every site has to have its own one and every time someone requests your web site the .htaccess gets hit and has to be checked, this is unnecessary overhead for Apache and not to mention a pain when it comes to maintenance and updating your ruleset.

.htaccess just sucks full stop. One reason after 9 years I have moved everything to Nginx but will continue to keep this file updated as it is solid and it works.

FEATURES OF THE APACHE ULTIMATE BAD BOT BLOCKER:

Extensive Lists of Bad and Known Bad Bots and Scrapers (updated almost daily)
Blocking of Spam Referrer Domains and Web Sites
Blocking of SEO data collection companies like Semalt.com, Builtwith.com, WooRank.com and many others (updated regularly)
Blocking of clickjacking Sites linked to Adware, Malware and Ransomware
Blocking of Porn and Gambling Web Sites who use Lucrative Ways to Earn Money through Serving Ads by hopping off your domain names and web sites.
Blocking of Bad Domains and IP's that you cannot even see in your Nginx Logs. Thanks to the Content Security Policy (CSP) on all my SSL sites I can see things trying to pull resources off my sites before they even get to Nginx and get blocked by the CSP.
Anti DDOS Filter and Rate Limiting of Agressive Bots
Alphabetically ordered for easier maintenance (Pull Requests Welcomed)
Commented sections of certain important bots to be sure of before blocking
Includes the IP range of Cyveillance who are known to ignore robots.txt rules and snoop around all over the Internet.
Whitelisting of Google, Bing and Cloudflare IP Ranges
Whitelisting of your own IP Ranges that you want to avoid blocking by mistake.
Ability to add other IP ranges and IP blocks that you want to block out.
If its out there and it's bad it's already in here and BLOCKED !!

UNDERSTANDS PUNYCODE / IDN DOMAIN NAMES

A lot of lists out there put funny domains into their hosts file. Your hosts file and DNS will not understand this. This list uses converted domains which are in the correct DNS format to be understood by any operating system. Avoid using lists that do not put the correctly formatted domain structure into their lists.

For instance The domain:

lifehacĸer.com (note the K)

actually translates to:

xn--lifehacer-1rb.com

You can do an nslookup on any operating system and it will resolve correctly.

nslookup xn--lifehacer-1rb.com

	origin = dns1.yandex.net
	mail addr = iskalko.yandex.ru
	serial = 2016120703
	refresh = 14400
	retry = 900
	expire = 1209600
	minimum = 14400
xn--lifehacer-1rb.com	mail exchanger = 10 mx.yandex.net.
Name:	xn--lifehacer-1rb.com
Address: 78.110.60.230
xn--lifehacer-1rb.com	nameserver = dns2.yandex.net.
xn--lifehacer-1rb.com	text = "v=spf1 redirect=_spf.yandex.net"
xn--lifehacer-1rb.com	nameserver = dns1.yandex.net.

Look at: https://www.charset.org/punycode for more info on this.

WARNING:

Please understand why you are using the Apache Bad Bot Blocker before you even use this. Please do not simply copy and paste without understanding what this is doing. Do not become a copy and paste Linux "Guru", learn things properly before you use them and always test everything you do one step at a time.

MONITOR WHAT YOU ARE DOING:

MAKE SURE to monitor your web site logs after implementing this. I suggest you first load this into one site and monitor it for any possible false positives before putting this into production on all your web sites.

Also monitor your logs daily for new bad referers and user-agent strings that you want to block. Your best source of adding to this list is your own server logs, not mine.

HOW TO MONITOR YOUR APACHE LOGS DAILY (The Easy Way):

With great thanks and appreciation to https://blog.nexcess.net/2011/01/21/one-liners-for-apache-log-files/

To monitor your top referer's for a web site's log file's on a daily basis use the following simple cron jobs which will email you a list of top referer's / user agents every morning from a particular web site's log files. This is an example for just one cron job for one site. Set up multiple one's for each one you want to monitor. Here is a cron that runs at 8am every morning and emails me the stripped down log of referers. When I say stripped down, the domain of the site and other referers like Google and Bing are stripped from the results. Of course you must change the log file name, domain name and your email address in the examples below. The second cron for collecting User agents does not do any stripping out of any referers but you can add that functionality if you like copying the awk statement !~ from the first example.

Cron for Monitoring Daily Referers on Apache

00 08 * * * tail -10000 /var/log/apache/mydomain-access.log | awk '$11 !~ /google|bing|yahoo|yandex|mywebsite.com/' | awk '{print $11}' | tr -d '"' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -1000 | mail -s "Top 1000 Referers for Mydomain.com" me@mydomain.com

Cron for Monitoring Daily User Agents on Apache

00 08 * * * tail -50000 /var/log/apache/mydomain-access.log | awk '{print $12}' | tr -d '"' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -1000 | mail -s "Top 1000 Agents for Mydomain.com" me@mydomain.com

EASY CONFIGURATION INSTRUCTIONS FOR STOPPING GOOGLE ANALYTICS "GHOST" SPAM

Simply using the Apache blocker does not stop Google Analytics ghost referral spam because they are hitting Analytics directly and not always necessarily touching your website.

You should use regex filters in Analytics to prevent ghost referral spam.

For this there are several google-exclude-0*.txt files which have been created for you and they are updated at the same time when the Nginx Blocker is updated. As the list grows there will be more exclude files created.

To stop Ghost Spam on On Analytics

Follow the step by step visual instructions below to add these google-exclude files as segments to your web site.

Blocking Spam Referrer Domains Using Google Webmaster Tools (How to use google-disavow.txt file)

I have added the creation of a Google Disavow text file called google-disavow.txt. This file can be used in Google's Webmaster Tools to block all these domains out as spammy or bad links. Use with caution.

Blocking Agressive Bots at Firewall Level Using Fail2Ban

I have added a custom Fail2Ban filter and action that I have written which monitors your Apache logs for bots that generate a large number of 403 errors. This custom jail for Fail2Ban will scan logs over a 1 week period and ban the offender for 24 hours. It helps a great deal in keeping out some repeat offenders and preventing them from filling up your log files with 403 errors. See the Fail2Ban folder for instructions on configuring this great add on for the Apache Bad Bot Blocker.

Help Support This Project

Also Checkout The Big List of Hacked Malware Web Sites

This repository contains a list of all web sites I come across that are hacked with malware. Most site owners are unaware their sites have been hacked and are being used to plant malware.

Check it out at: https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/The-Big-List-of-Hacked-Malware-Web-Sites

Some other free projects

Acknowledgements & Contributors:

Many parts of the generator scripts and code running behind this project have been adapted from multiple sources. In fact it's so hard to mention everyone but here are a few key people whose little snippets of code have helped me introduce new features all the time. Show them some love and check out some of their projects too

Luke Taylor @lutaylor (Improvements to the install and update scripts and fixing paths for Apache 2.2, 2.4 and CentOS Versions)
Konstantin Goretzki @konstantingoretzki https://github.com/konstantingoretzki (Improved Regex on Fail2Ban Filter)
Stevie-Ray Hartog https://github.com/Stevie-Ray
Nissar Chababy @funilrys - https://github.com/funilrys/funceble (Excellent script for checking ACTIVE, INACTIVE and EXPIRED Domain Names)
Marius Voila https://github.com/mariusv
Cătălin Mariș https://github.com/alrra
deformhead https://github.com/deformhead
bluedragonz https://github.com/bluedragonz
Alexander https://github.com/shoonois
Steven Black https://github.com/StevenBlack
Fail2Ban - https://github.com/fail2ban
Sir Athos from StackOverFlow - http://stackoverflow.com/users/2245910/sir-athos (help with Travis Build Tagging and Committing)
StackOverflow - http://stackoverflow.com/ (bash scripts from hundreds of questions and answers)
SuperUser - http://superuser.com/ (snippets from various questions and answers)

If you believe your name should be here, drop me a line.

INTO PHOTOGRAPHY?

Come drop by and visit me at mitchellkrog.com or Facebook or Follow Me on Twitter <a href='https://twitter.com/MitchellKrog'><img src='https://img.shields.io/twitter/follow/MitchellKrog.svg?style=social&label=Follow' alt='Follow @MitchellKrog'></a>

Help Support This Project

Update Notification System

Please subscribe your email address to the mailing list at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker or simply send a blank email to apache-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker+subscribe@googlegroups.com to subscribe. Please make sure you are subscribed to notifications to be notified when the blocker is updated and also to be notified when any important or mission critical changes take place.

Also follow me on twitter <a href='https://twitter.com/ubuntu101za'><img src='https://img.shields.io/twitter/follow/ubuntu101za.svg?style=social&label=Follow' alt='Follow @ubuntu101za'></a>

MIT License

https://github.com/mitchellkrogza

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Awesome

Apache Bad Bot and User-Agent Blocker, Spam Referrer Blocker, Bad IP Blocker and Wordpress Theme Detector Blocker

Version: V3.2024.12.2123

Bad Referrer Count: 7104

Bad Bot Count: 666

Fake Googlebots: 217

Two Versions of the Blocker ? PLEASE TAKE NOTE :exclamation:

For Support, Contributions & Idea Sharing

Also follow me on twitter @ubuntu101za

Help Support This Project

CONFIGURATION OF THE APACHE BAD BOT BLOCKER:

AUTO UPDATING WITH CRON:

AUTO UPDATING WITH CRON:

WHY BLOCK BAD BOTS ?

Bad bots are:

To contribute your own bad referers

Issues:

No root access to your Apache server and Unable to run this blocker?

Help Support This Project

Welcome to the Ultimate Bad Bot and Referer Blocker for Apache Web Server 2.4.x

THE METHOD IN MY MADNESS

IT'S CENTRALISED:

IT IS TINY AND LIGHTWEIGHT

NO COMPLICATED REWRITE RULES:

APACHE WILL LOVE YOU FOR IT !!!!

FEATURES OF THE APACHE ULTIMATE BAD BOT BLOCKER:

UNDERSTANDS PUNYCODE / IDN DOMAIN NAMES

WARNING:

MONITOR WHAT YOU ARE DOING:

HOW TO MONITOR YOUR APACHE LOGS DAILY (The Easy Way):

Cron for Monitoring Daily Referers on Apache

Cron for Monitoring Daily User Agents on Apache

EASY CONFIGURATION INSTRUCTIONS FOR STOPPING GOOGLE ANALYTICS "GHOST" SPAM

To stop Ghost Spam on On Analytics

Blocking Spam Referrer Domains Using Google Webmaster Tools (How to use google-disavow.txt file)

Blocking Agressive Bots at Firewall Level Using Fail2Ban

Help Support This Project

Also Checkout The Big List of Hacked Malware Web Sites

Some other free projects

Acknowledgements & Contributors:

INTO PHOTOGRAPHY?

Help Support This Project

Update Notification System

Also follow me on twitter <a href='https://twitter.com/ubuntu101za'><img src='https://img.shields.io/twitter/follow/ubuntu101za.svg?style=social&label=Follow' alt='Follow @ubuntu101za'></a>

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2017 Mitchell Krog - mitchellkrog@gmail.com

https://github.com/mitchellkrogza